His words were cut short by a keening noise from Jäävklo’s throat, a keening that quickly grew to a howl of rage. Fumbling, wrenching, the chief tore off his sleeveless leather shirt. The howl had broken into hoarse, grunting cries, wordless shouts, and when his torso was bare, he drew his sword and charged the lagman.
Nils Järnhann’s sword was out too, and blind-eyed he met the man’s berserk assault. The violent energy and quickness of Jäävklo’s attack was shocking to Baver, who’d never before witnessed an attack to kill. But the lagman beat off the berserker’s strokes, seemingly without any effort to strike back; either he was too hard pressed or he exercised an unexplainable restraint.
Then Jäävklo’s sword broke against the lagman’s, almost at the hilt. With a howl, he flung the rest of it at his adversary, then turned and threw himself on the council fire, where he lay roaring as if in rage, without trying to get up. Staring wide-eyed past his recorder, Baver shook, twitched, almost spouted sweat, and got half up as if to run and rescue the man. But didn’t. Instead he continued to record. It seemed impossible that the Glutton chief had done what he had, and having done it, that pain did not drive him off.
And that no one pulled him off!
The raucous roaring stopped. Then Baver doubled over and emptied his stomach onto the ground. When he was done retching, he settled down onto his knees, staring as the lagman, who’d gone to the dead Jäävklo, grasped the corpse’s feet and pulled it from the fire. Baver heard no one else be sick, though surely this horrible, this shocking event must have traumatized some of them, at least.
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Then he remembered the departure of the Orcs* from the City of Kazi, and what the Northmen found there the next day. And wondered if after all they might handle this with similar dispassion, might treat it simply as an unfortunate display of aberration.
*Ores—Name applied to the soldiers of Kazi the Undying, a Middle-Eastern emperor.
TWO
From—A video interview with Use in the botanical conservatory on the eve of the vernal equinox, Deep Harbor, New Home, A.c. 781. By Lateefah Fourier
LF: Intriguing, to have grown up that way. But before i go, our viewers will never forgive me if we don’t talk about your husband, the Ingiing. Did I say that correctly? The Ingiing?
Ilse: Approximately. It’s more precise, however, to say the / sound with the lips rounded. Yngling. The Y is like the umiauted U in German.
LF: Yngling. There! How did I do that time? Use: Quite well.
LF: But “Yngling” is not his name, right? His name is Nils Järnhann.
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Ilse: That’s right. As a child he was known as Nils Hammarsson, because his father, an Ironsmith, is called Hammar. Which means hammer, as you might suspect. Järnhann is his warrior name, given him when he completed his sword apprenticeship. It means Ironhand. While still a sword apprentice, and not fully grown, he killed a man, a warrior, with a blow of his fist.
LF: The Northman culture certainly seems violent.
Ilse: It’s a controlled violence. The warriors are violent, the rest of the culture not particularly so. The Northmen have a system of laws that contain most of the violence within the warrior class. The ordinary freeman is less subject to violence from within his culture than in my own country, Germany.
LF: And ingling—Yngling—is a title, right?
Ilse: In a sense, yes. Long ago, “yngling” simply meant a youth in their language. Anciently, Anglic had a cognate, “youngling.” All three Northman tribes share a legend of a young man who appeared in a time of danger perhaps two hundred years ago, when constant warring threatened to destroy them. They had no warrior class then; all men fought. The southern tribe, the Jötar, had gained the upper hand, and it seemed they would kill or enslave the Svear. And probably the Norskar as well.
Then an yngling appeared among the Svear, to become a great raid leader and war chief, and before long it seemed that they’d destroy the Jötar instead. Then an yngling came among the Jötar and saved them. After that he made himself known as the same yngling who had saved the Svear and Norskar. He said he belonged to no tribe or clan, but to all Northmen. And he had great power over them because of his wisdom and truth and justice, and gave them the Bans that set limits on warring and